yelloe..possible background extraction

[mpskin]

This is the other w/yellow cast..wasnt to do background extraction and add a nice studio background to it...any tips or suggestions?

[Doug Nelson]

You're lucky on this one in that there's good contrast between their arms and the bg on the blue channel. Use a copy of it as the basis of your mask. Start with threshold, then do some manual painting on it, then finish it up with a slight gaussian blur.

[mpskin]

threshhold

copied the blue channel... opened up threshhold..went to about 58...etc etc...but when i went to load election i was exact around the hair to the background...i went back but it is tricky when you are around the outside of the hair b/c it is black..what do i do to selecy it more carefully ? the background is o close to the outside if the hair that i cant see the difference...any tips on that part?

[Doug Nelson]

Try working over a solid white layer. Put your thresholded image as a layer mask on a duplicate of your background image. Then use your normal painting tools on the mask. You'll see right away where to paint and where not to paint. Paint white to show and black to hide. You can use a fill color besides white if it helps.

So your layer stack would look like this:

Background duplicate + layer mask
Solid color fill layer
Background

The solid color fill layer is just for contrast to help you with making the mask. Once you're done you can delete it or replace it with whatever it is you're going to put them in front of.

[mpskin]

where cam i find what is called three steps to perfect studio background

Doug

[mpskin]

where cam i find what is called three steps to perfect studio background

Doug as i was browsing i found that you have something called three steps to a perfect studio background....where can i find this link...i did a search but did not find it.

[Doug Nelson]

No fault of yours. The thread used the term "backdrop", not "background".

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1486